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Palestinian Athletes Promote Destruction of Israel: ‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free’
Palestinian Olympic Committee President Jibril Rajoub, who also heads the Palestinian Football Association, holds a news conference to update the media about challenges facing Palestinian sports ahead of the Olympics in Paris, in Ramallah, in the West Bank, June 12, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
The Palestinian Authority (PA) is relentless in announcing its goal to eliminate the State of Israel, and create a state of Palestine that stretches from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.
While training in Malaysia, the Palestinian national soccer team, which is a member of FIFA, posed for photos wearing scarves featuring the PA map of “Palestine” that presents all of Israel as “Palestine” in the colors of the Palestinian flag.
To spell out the PA message, the text in English on the scarves was explicit:
From the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea Palestine will be free
Posted text: “The [Palestinian] ‘Fida’i’ [self-sacrificing fighter] national team reached Malaysia for training camp”
[Palestinian Football Association, Facebook page, Aug. 26, 2024]
The term “Fida’i,” literally self-sacrificing fighter, is the PA’s term for its terrorists.
The PA has promoted the goal of “river-to-sea-Palestine” for decades, and the slogan has been adopted by anti-Israel protesters around the world during Israel’s current war against Hamas.
The slogan is rightly criticized for what it is: A call for the destruction of Israel.
To combat this criticism, the PA recently tried to present the slogan as “a call for peace” — but Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) and others have demonstrated that this call has a long history of referring to the total elimination of the State of Israel.
The Palestinian Football Association is headed by top PA official Jibril Rajoub, who is known for his support of terror against Israel and denial of Israel’s right to exist, as documented by PMW.
During the current war with Hamas, Rajoub has whitewashed Hamas’ massacre and murder of 1,200 people on October 7, 2023, as a Palestinian “defense war,” and referred to Oct. 7 as an “epic” event that included “acts of heroism.”
In 2018, PMW complained to FIFA about Rajoub, and he was suspended by FIFA from all activities for a year. In response, Rajoub lashed out at PMW, calling its director “Goebbels of the 21st century.”
Rajoub also heads the PLO Supreme Council for Youth and Sports, which organizes summer camps for hundreds of Palestinian kids every year. Among the activities are always map drawing, where kids are taught that “Palestine” really does stretch “from the river to the sea”:
[PLO Supreme Council of Youth and Sports, Facebook page, July 22, 2024]
Rajoub’s PLO Supreme Council for Youth and Sports also distributes numerous plaques featuring the PA map of “Palestine” that includes the entire State of Israel.
The author is a senior analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article was originally published.
The post Palestinian Athletes Promote Destruction of Israel: ‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.